MEV Bots Overwhelm Blockchains and Hinder Scalability, Flashbots Warns

• MEV bots consume more than half of the gas in rollups
• MEV congestion affects blockchain scalability
• Flashbots proposes MEV auctions to ease transactions

Flashbots, an organization focused on research and development in the crypto sector, has pointed out that maximum extractable value (MEV) bots are putting unprecedented pressure on the scalability of major blockchains. According to a report Recently, spam transactions generated by these bots are taking up block space faster than networks can add it, negating recent gains in throughput.

MEV bots are clogging blockchains faster than networks can scale, says Flashbots https://t.co/so0gKCOkjA

— Crypto Brothers (@LosKruptos) June 17, 2025

MEV refers to the profits that validators make by manipulating the order of transactions within a block. According to Flashbots, the use of MEV bots has turned this process into a “spam auction,” in which thousands of transactions are sent with the aim of capturing low-margin arbitrage, taxing the network and harming regular users.

In OP-Stack-based rollups, bots already consume more than 50% of available gas, despite accounting for less than 10% of fees collected. “Bots often send hundreds of transactions for a single low-margin arbitrage. While profitable for the bots, it is wasteful for the network, overloading nodes and users,” Flashbots wrote.

The situation is especially dire on Coinbase’s Base Network, where just two bots were responsible for more than 80% of spam transactions between November 2024 and February 2025. During that period, the network’s throughput capacity increased by 11 million gas per second, a volume equivalent to three times that of Ethereum’s mainnet — virtually all of it absorbed by bots.

The report also highlights that the problem is not restricted to Ethereum. On Solana, MEV bots occupy about 40% of the block space, indicating that the real limitation on scalability is linked to economic congestion, rather than the technical capacity of the networks.

As a solution, Flashbots proposed replacing gas-based bidding with a two-stage system, with dedicated MEV auctions and programmable privacy for off-chain bidding. This would allow mined value to be directed back to validators and users, without compromising the integrity of the order flow or favoring frontrunning.